USB Bluetooth adapter to use with Apple keyboard and mice

I've been using a "IOGear USB 2.1 Bluetooth Micro Adapter GBU421" ( http://www.iogear.com/product/GBU421/) for about a two weeks now on my Mac Pro with it plugged into the back of my monitor. I did it because the signal strength from my Mac Pro to the Magic Mouse wasn't all that great (showed itself as "sluggish" or not tracking sometimes -- very annoying). No mouse problems since switching to it. It tracks all the time.

The only problems with this setup was that if I put the machine to sleep or reboot the USB is of course powered off so the mouse (and trackpad too) wouldn't always re-pair upon power-up. Sometimes I would need to re-pair the mouse, less so with the track pad.

A few days ago I did a "full factory reset" all the bluetooth stuff using the Bluetooth Explorer (part of the XCode developer tools) and now my mouse and trackpad are always paired after sleep and reboot. At least so far. As I said it's only been a few days since I did this.

I assume using a dongle on a macbook in place of the in-board bluetooth will work fine. Indeed these dongles are a small as they are specifically for use on portables.

Hello Diego:

I do not use a "dongle," so I have no recommendation. As I recall, this question has come up before. Try a search of this forum for more information. Also, a google search should give you adapter options that work with a Mac.

Barry

Well, it's certainly a cheap enough experiment 🙂 I got mine on sale at Fry's for about $8.

Oh, as an update, when I woke my machine up this morning this time I needed to toggle the mouse on/off switch to get the dongle to notice it. Funny, the trackpad never seems to have a problem. It works as soon as the machine wakes. The only thing I don't like about toggling the on/off switch is I assume if I do it enough times I'm going to wear it out!